Threat actors are using a new attack technique that allows them to evade detection and gain full code execution of Microsoft Management Console using specially crafted management saved console (MSC) files. Elastic Security Labs researchers uncovered the new technique after a sample was uploaded to VirusTotal on June 6 – and it has yet to trigger static detections by antivirus tools on the site. The researchers are calling the new infection technique GrimResource.

GrimResource Attack Uses Old XSS Flaw

GrimResource is a “a novel, in-the-wild code execution technique leveraging specially crafted MSC files,” the researchers wrote. “GrimResource allows attackers to execute arbitrary code in Microsoft Management Console (mmc.exe) with minimal security warnings, ideal for gaining initial access and evading defenses.” The key to the attack technique is an old XSS flaw present in the apds.dll library. “By adding a reference to the vulnerable APDS resource in the appropriate StringTable section of a crafted MSC file, attackers can execute arbitrary javascript in the context of mmc.exe,” they said. Attackers can combine the technique with DotNetToJScript to gain arbitrary code execution. The sample begins with a TransformNode obfuscation technique, which was recently reported by open source tool developer Philippe Lagadec in unrelated macro samples. The obfuscation technique helps evade ActiveX security warnings and leads to an obfuscated embedded VBScript, which sets the target payload in a series of environment variables before leveraging the DotNetToJs technique to execute an embedded .NET loader. The researchers named that component PASTALOADER. PASTALOADER retrieves the payload from environment variables set by the VBScript and “spawns a new instance of dllhost.exe and injects the payload into it. This is done in a deliberately stealthy manner using the DirtyCLR technique, function unhooking, and indirect syscalls. In this sample, the final payload is Cobalt Strike.” Using the DotNetToJScript technique triggers another detection looking for RWX memory allocation from .NET on behalf of a Windows Script Host (WSH) script engine. The researchers created a rule in Elastic’s Event Query Language (EQL) to detect execution via the .NET loader.

GrimResource Detection Rules Provided

Those detections can be bypassed with stealthier methods, the researchers noted: Using apds.dll to execute Jscript via XSS, which can create detectable artifacts in the mmc.exe Procmon output as a CreateFile operation (apds.dll is not loaded as a library), and the creation of a temporary HTML file in the INetCache folder, named redirect[*] as a result of the APDS XSS redirection. In addition to EQL rules, the researchers also provided a YARA detection rule: [caption id="attachment_78894" align="alignnone" width="500"] GrimResource YARA detection rule (source: Elastic Security Labs)[/caption] “Defenders should leverage our detection guidance to protect themselves and their customers from this technique before it proliferates into commodity threat groups,” the researchers warned.

Cyble Research & Intelligence Labs (CRIL) last week analyzed 154 vulnerabilities in its weekly vulnerability report, including critical flaws in products from the likes of Microsoft, VMware, Veeam and ASUS. A whopping 126 of the vulnerabilities occurred in Siemens industrial control systems (ICS) products, potentially putting critical manufacturing infrastructure at risk. About 25,000 new security vulnerabilities are discovered each year, yet only a small percentage of those are actively exploited by threat actors. To help security teams focus on the most important vulnerabilities and threats, The Cyber Express is collaborating with Cyble’s highly skilled dark web and threat intelligence researchers to highlight security vulnerabilities that warrant particularly close attention.

The Week’s Top Vulnerabilities

Cyble’s weekly report focused on 9 of the vulnerabilities in particular; they are:

CVE-2024-37079, CVE-2024-37080 and CVE-2024-37081: VMware

Impact Analysis: These critical and high severity heap-overflow and privilege escalation vulnerabilities impact the VMware vCenter Server, a central management platform for VMware vSphere, enabling the management of virtual machines and ESXi hosts. With the global usage of the impacted product and the history of leveraging flaws impacting vCenter, there is strong potential for threat actors (Tas) to leverage these critical vulnerabilities also. Internet Exposure: Yes Available Patch? Yes

CVE-2024-3080: ASUS Router Bypass

Impact Analysis: This critical authentication bypass vulnerability impacts certain ASUS router models, allowing unauthenticated remote attackers to log in to the device. Recently, the Taiwan Computer Emergency Response Team informed users about the vulnerability and released an advisory with fixes to patch the flaw. Internet Exposure: Yes Patch Available? Yes

CVE-2024-3912: ASUS Arbitrary Firmware Upload Vulnerability

Impact Analysis: This critical arbitrary firmware upload vulnerability impacts certain ASUS router models, allowing unauthenticated remote attackers to execute arbitrary system commands on the device. The Taiwan Computer Emergency Response Team also informed users about this vulnerability and released an advisory with fixes to patch the flaw. Internet Exposure: Yes Patch Available? Yes

CVE-2024-29855: Veeam Recovery Orchestrator

Impact Analysis: This critical authentication bypass vulnerability impacts the Veeam Recovery Orchestrator. The recovery solution extends the capabilities of the Veeam Data Platform by automating recovery processes and providing comprehensive reporting and testing features. The availability of a recent publicly available proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for this vulnerability elevates the risk of exploitation in attacks by TAs. Internet Exposure: No Patch Available? Yes

CVE-2024-30103: Microsoft Outlook RCE Vulnerability

Impact Analysis: This high-severity remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability impacts Microsoft Outlook. Since the zero-click RCE flaw can be exploited simply by opening and previewing an email that contains a malicious payload in the body of the email, requiring no further interaction from the user, there are high possibilities for the weaponization of the vulnerability by TAs in targeting government and private entities. Internet Exposure: No Patch Available? Yes

CVE-2024-30078: Windows Wi-Fi Driver RCE Vulnerability

Impact Analysis: This high severity remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability impacts Windows Wi-Fi Driver. With the wide usage of Windows devices around the world and the ability to exploit without the need for any user interaction, TAs can leverage the flaw to gain initial access to the devices and later install malware and exfiltrate user data. Internet Exposure: No Patch Available? Yes

CVE-2024-37051: JetBrains GitHub Plugin Vulnerability

Impact Analysis: This critical vulnerability in the JetBrains GitHub plugin on the IntelliJ open-source platform affects all IntelliJ-based IDEs, leading to the exposure of GitHub access tokens. TAs can leverage the vulnerability by using exposed tokens to gain unauthorized access to user GitHub accounts and repositories and possibly deploy malicious code or delete the repositories. Internet Exposure: No Patch Available? Yes

CISA Adds 5 Vulnerabilities to KEV Catalog

Five of the vulnerabilities in the Cyble report were added to CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog:

• CVE-2024-32896, an Android Pixel vulnerability with a 7.8 CVSSv3 criticality score
• CVE-2024-26169, a Microsoft Windows error reporting service elevation of privilege vulnerability with a 7.8 criticality rating
• CVE-2024-4358, a Progress Telerik Report Server vulnerability with a 9.8 rating
• CVE-2024-4610, an Arm Mali GPU Kernel Driver vulnerability with a 5.5 rating
• CVE-2024-4577, a PHP remote code execution flaw, a 9.8 vulnerability that Cyble addressed in last week’s report

The full Cyble report available for clients covers all these vulnerabilities, along with details and discussion around exploits found on the dark web, industrial control system (ICS) vulnerability intelligence, and cybersecurity defenses. Cyble security analysts also conducted scans of customer environments to alert them of any exposures – and found more than 2 million exposures to 13 of the vulnerabilities. Stay ahead of cyber threats with the Weekly Vulnerability Intelligence Report by Cyble, brought to you by The Cyber Express. Subscribe now for the latest insights powered by Cyble's advanced AI-driven threat intelligence.

Cybersecurity researchers are tracking a novel Linux malware campaign that makes use of Discord emojis for command and control (C2) communication with attackers. The campaign’s unusual combination of Linux malware and phishing lures suggests an attack aimed at Linux desktop users, the researchers from Volexity said. “Volexity assesses it is highly likely this campaign, and the malware used, is targeted specifically towards government entities in India, who use a custom Linux distribution named BOSS as their daily desktop,” they wrote.

Threat Actor ‘UTA0137’ Linked to Campaign

Volexity researchers connected the campaign to a Pakistan-based threat actor they call UTA0137. The researchers said they have “high confidence that UTA0137 has espionage-related objectives and a remit to target government entities in India. Based on Volexity’s analysis, UTA0137’s campaigns appear to have been successful.” The researchers say they have “moderate confidence” that UTA0137 is a Pakistan-based threat actor because of the group’s targets and a few other reasons:

• The Pakistani time zone was hardcoded in one malware sample.
• There are weak infrastructure links to SideCopy, a known Pakistan-based threat actor.
• The Punjabi language was used in the malware.

The malware used by the threat group uses a modified version of the discord-c2 GitHub project for its Discord command and control (C2) communication. The malware, dubbed DISGOMOJI by the researchers, is written in Golang and compiled for Linux systems. The threat actors also use the DirtyPipe (CVE-2022-0847) privilege escalation exploit against “BOSS 9” systems, which remain vulnerable to the exploit.

Attack Starts With DSOP PDF

The malware is delivered via a DSOP.pdf lure, which claims to be a beneficiary document of India’s Defence Service Officer Provident Fund (screenshot below). [caption id="attachment_77503" align="alignnone" width="750"] The DSOP lure that downloads the malware[/caption] The malware then downloads the next-stage payload, named vmcoreinfo, from a remote server, clawsindia[.]in. The payload is an instance of the DISGOMOJI malware and is dropped in a hidden folder named .x86_64-linux-gnu in the user’s home directory. DISGOMOJI, a UPX-packed ELF written in Golang, uses Discord for C2. “An authentication token and server ID are hardcoded inside the ELF, which are used to access the Discord server,”  they wrote. “The malware creates a dedicated channel for itself in the Discord server, meaning each channel in the server represents an individual victim. The attacker can then interact with every victim individually using these channels.” On startup, DISGOMOJI sends a check-in message in the channel that contains information like the internal IP, the user name, host name, OS and current working directory. The malware can survive reboots through the addition of a @reboot entry to the crontab, and it also downloads a script named uevent_seqnum.sh to copy files from any attached USB devices.

Discord Emojis Used for C2 Communication

C2 communication uses an emoji-based protocol, “where the attacker sends commands to the malware by sending emojis to the command channel, with additional parameters following the emoji where applicable.” A Clock emoji in the command message lets the attacker know a command is being processed, while a Check Mark emoji confirms that the command was executed. The researchers summarized the emoji commands in a table: [caption id="attachment_77505" align="alignnone" width="750"] The Discord emojis used to communicate with attackers (source: Volexity)[/caption] Post-exploitation activities include use of the Zenity utility to display malicious dialog boxes to socially engineer users into giving up their passwords. Open source tools such as Nmap, Chisel and Ligolo are also used, and the DirtyPipe exploit suggests increasing sophistication of the atacker's methods, the researchers said. Indicators of compromise (IoCs) can be downloaded from the Volexity GitHub page:

• YARA rules
• Single value indicators

The on-again, off-again saga of BreachForums took another twist in recent days with the news that the data leak forum apparently has a new owner. ShinyHunters – who had reportedly retired after tiring of the pressure of running a notorious hacker forum – returned on June 14 to announce that the forum is now under the ownership of a threat actor operating under the new handle name “Anastasia.” It’s not yet clear if the move will quell concerns that the forum has been taken over by law enforcement after a May 15 FBI-led takeover, but for now, BreachForums is up and running under its .st domain.

ShinyHunters Alludes to BreachForums Issues

ShinyHunters alluded to those issues in a post announcing the forum’s new owner (screenshot below). “It's hard to maintain motivation when you're constantly getting accused of being a honeypot and at this point I'm burned out, hollow is burned out and we just want to move on to bigger things rather than the constant onslaught of users complaining about how we ran our forum,” ShinyHunters wrote. “Baphomet has done an incredible job of building new features for everyone, keeping everything together and maintaining the forum. Couldn't have done it without him. We hope the forum can live on without us for a long time. Thank you all for your support. Goodbye.” [caption id="attachment_77484" align="alignnone" width="750"] The announcement of a new BreachForums owner[/caption] While “User-Anastasia” is a new account, ShinyHunters referred to the new owner as “an OG some of you may remember.” Cyble threat researchers reported that Anastasia also goes by “Anastasia Belshaw.”

BreachForums Returns, Hackers Raise Suspicions

BreachForums was seized by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice in mid-May, with help from international law enforcement agencies, and Baphomet was allegedly arrested in that action. However, just two weeks later, the forum returned, leading to suspicion among some threat actors that the site was operating as a “honeypot” or a sting operation under the control of the FBI. To further complicate matters, the site went down again last week, possibly due to technical issues, and its associated Telegram channels disappeared too amid reports that ShinyHunters was retiring. A few days later came the announcement that Anastasia would take over the forum. It remains to be seen what direction the forum will take under new ownership, but given the site’s volatile history, whatever is in store is certain to be eventful.

June 13, 2024 may go down as one of the tougher days in Microsoft’s long history. The day started with a report alleging that a vulnerability long neglected by Microsoft led to the SolarWinds software supply chain breach in 2021; was followed by a nearly three-hour hostile hearing on Capitol Hill over the software giant’s security failures that resulted in a massive hack by China of U.S. government email systems; and it ended late at night with the company’s announcement that it will delay the rollout of its Windows Recall screen recording feature that faced heavy criticism from cybersecurity researchers over the lack of security and data privacy controls built into Recall. Microsoft President Brad Smith struck a conciliatory tone in his hearing with U.S. lawmakers and he outlined plans to improve security at the company, but the bungled launch of Recall – coming after the company had already pledged at least twice to improve security – shows that the software and cloud technology giant has a long way to go to make good on those pledges.

Recall Controversy Took Off After a Report on The Cyber Express

Calls to overhaul Recall’s security and privacy features started with the work of security researcher Kevin Beaumont, who called the lack of controls the “dumbest cybersecurity move in a decade.” Beaumont’s work demonstrating Recall’s security holes was first reported in a Cyber Express article that landed on the front page of tech news aggregator Slashdot, where it received 140 comments, and the story took off from there, creating something of a PR nightmare for Microsoft. Further proofs supporting Beaumont’s work emerged, and Microsoft belatedly tried to address the security and privacy concerns, but apparently not in time for the release of Copilot+ PCs planned for June 18. In a blog post update late on June 13, Microsoft said Recall will now become “a preview available first in the Windows Insider Program (WIP) in the coming weeks. Following receiving feedback on Recall from our Windows Insider Community, as we typically do, we plan to make Recall (preview) available for all Copilot+ PCs coming soon. “We are adjusting the release model for Recall to leverage the expertise of the Windows Insider community to ensure the experience meets our high standards for quality and security.”

Beaumont Welcomes Microsoft Recall Delay, Awaits Changes

In a post on a Mastodon cybersecurity instance, Beaumont welcomed the Microsoft Recall delay. “Good on Microsoft for finally reaching a sane conclusion,” he wrote. “When it does appear in preview channels, privacy and security researchers need to keep a close eye on what Microsoft are doing with the feature. “Microsoft tried developing this feature in secret in a way which tried to avoid scrutiny. Thank you to everyone who stood up.” Beaumont said it’s his understanding that Recall was developed without input from security and privacy staff. “I've also been told Microsoft security and privacy staff weren't provided Recall, as the feature wasn't made available broadly internally either,” he said.

Microsoft’s cybersecurity efforts have been roundly criticized in recent months, and despite pledges to do better, the company has compounded the problem with missteps like the Copilot+ Recall rollout. Microsoft security controls came under scrutiny in April with the release of a U.S. Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) report that detailed “a cascade of security failures at Microsoft” that allowed threat actors linked to China to access “the official email accounts of many of the most senior U.S. government officials managing our country’s relationship with the People’s Republic of China” in a July 2023 attack. Rather than make good on pledges to make cybersecurity a top priority, Microsoft followed with the cybersecurity equivalent of an own goal when it pushed ahead with the new Windows Recall screen recording feature despite the concerns of security and privacy advocates that the company belatedly tried to address. Late today, Microsoft announced that it will delay the Recall feature for further testing. The House Committee on Homeland Security held a hearing today to address the CSRB report and Microsoft security in general, with Microsoft President Brad Smith the sole witness. The hearing, titled “A Cascade of Security Failures: Assessing Microsoft Corporation’s Cybersecurity Shortfalls and the Implications for Homeland Security,” came on the same day that Pro Publica published a report detailing years of Microsoft security failings that led up to the massive 2021 SolarWinds breach.

Congressional Leaders Call for ‘Responsibility’ and ‘Accountability’

In his opening remarks, House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green (R-TN) called the CSRB report “extremely concerning,” and spoke of the need of “restoring the public trust” in the security of Microsoft products. “China and Russia, Beijing and Moscow, are watching us right now,” he cautioned, underscoring the stakes of the hearing while offering to move any sensitive questions to a secure environment. Ranking member Bennie Thompson (D-MS) stressed that “It is not the committee’s goal to shame or discredit” Smith and Microsoft, but to improve security and accountability at the vendor that supplies 85% of federal government productivity tools. Thompson noted the Recall rollout and Pro Publica article in his comments, calling “even more troubling” Smith’s 2021 claim before Congress that no Microsoft vulnerability was exploited in the SolarWinds attack. Green and Thompson weren’t the only committee members taking a firm tone with Microsoft, as almost every member did the same in their allotted time for questioning. Lou Correa (D-CA), for example, said he was “beyond shocked” at the security revelations in the CSRB report and elsewhere.

Microsoft President Smith Pledges Action

Perhaps anticipating a rough reception from lawmakers, Smith struck a conciliatory tone in his written and spoken testimony to the committee. “Microsoft accepts responsibility for each and every one of the issues cited in the CSRB’s report,” Smith said. “Without equivocation or hesitation. And without any sense of defensiveness. But rather with a complete commitment to address every recommendation and use this report as an opportunity and foundation to strengthen our cybersecurity protection across the board.” Smith said the company is making cybersecurity part of senior executive bonus calculations and employee reviews as part of the its goal of “empowering and rewarding every employee to find security issues, report them, help fix them, and encourage broader learning from the process and the results. This requires that we incorporate this security work as an indispensable and integrated element in every aspect of the company’s engineering processes.” [caption id="attachment_77142" align="alignnone" width="750"] Microsoft President Brad Smith testifying before House Homeland Security Committee[/caption] To that end, Smith said the company has added 1,600 more security engineers this fiscal year, “and we will add another 800 new security positions in our next fiscal year.” Senior-level Deputy CISOs at Microsoft have been tasked with expanding “oversight of the various engineering teams to assess and ensure that security is ‘baked into’ engineering decision-making and processes.” Smith said cyberattacks in general have become a massive problem: “the pace of attacks has increased to the point where there is now constant combat in cyberspace,” he said. “Not just every day, but literally every second. Microsoft alone detects almost 4,000 password-based attacks against our customers every second of every day.”

Microsoft Security Plans

Smith said Microsoft has mapped all 16 of the CSRB recommendations applicable to Microsoft “to ensure that we are addressing them” as part of the company’s Secure Future Initiative. The company is “actively in the process of transitioning both our consumer and enterprise identity systems to a new hardened key management system that leverages hardware security modules for the storage and generation of keys. We are rolling out proprietary data and corresponding detection signals at all places where tokens are validated. And we have made significant progress on Automated and Frequent Key Rotation, Common Auth Libraries, and Proprietary Data used in our token generation algorithm.” Smith’s written testimony outlined six “pillars” for improving security: Protect Identities and Secrets: Microsoft plans to implement and enforce “best-in-class standards across our infrastructure that manages identities and sensitive information such as passwords ('secrets'), to ensure that only the right people and applications access the right resources.” Protect Tenants and Isolate Production Systems: The company pledges to “continuously validate isolation of production systems – including those upon which we operate the Microsoft Cloud.” Protect Networks: Microsoft will “Continuously improve and implement best-in-class practices to protect Microsoft production networks.” Protect Engineering Systems: The company said it will work to “Continuously improve our software supply chain and the systems that enable Microsoft engineers to develop, build, test, and release software, thereby protecting software assets and improving code security.” Monitor and Detect Threats: This initiative calls for Microsoft to improve “coverage and automatic detection of ever evolving threats to Microsoft production infrastructure and services, accelerating actioning against those threats.” Accelerate Response and Remediation: Speeding incident response and remediation is the final pillar, so “when we learn of vulnerabilities in our offerings or our infrastructure, to be even more comprehensive and timely and better prevent exploitation of those vulnerabilities.” Updated to reflect the delay in the Recall rollout.

Ukraine National Police have arrested a man they say helped disguise ransomware used by Russia-based threat groups. The 28-year-old cryptor developer was unnamed in Ukraine and Netherlands announcements of the arrest, but the Dutch statement said he was arrested on April 18, 2024 in a lead-up to May’s massive “Operation Endgame” botnet takedown.

Cryptor Developer Worked with Conti, LockBit

Ukraine cyber ​​police and National Police investigators say they established that the man was involved in the LockBit and Conti ransomware groups. The Kyiv man infected a company in the Netherlands with Conti ransomware in 2021, demanded a ransom and threatened to release confidential company information if payment wasn’t made, according to the Dutch announcement, which cited work by the Netherlands’ High Tech Crime Team of the National Operations and Interventions Unit and the National Public Prosecution Service. They requested Ukraine’s assistance in the case as part of their investigation. As part of the arrest, Ukrainian police conducted house searches in the city of Kyiv and the Kharkiv region on April 18 and seized computer equipment, mobile phones and documents for further investigation (pictured below). [caption id="attachment_76895" align="alignnone" width="300"] Items seized in Ukraine ransomware arrest[/caption] The Ukraine cyber police said the man “specialized in the development of cryptors,” or “special software for masking computer viruses under the guise of safe files” (quotes translated from the Ukraine statement). “Thanks to his programming skills, the person involved was able to hide malicious software from the most popular antiviruses,” the Ukraine statement added.

LockBit Remains Active Despite Repeated Enforcement Activities

The Conti ransomware group reportedly dissolved in 2022 after a Ukrainian researcher leaked the group's source code in retaliation for the group's support of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but LockBit has remained persistent. Despite the Ukraine arrest and law enforcement successes like Operation Endgame, Operation Cronos, and the unmasking of formerly anonymous LockBit leader Dmitry Khoroshev, LockBit has shown an ability to continually regroup and reestablish threat activities, recently launching high-profile ransomware attacks such as one that the city of Wichita is finally recovering from. Ukraine officials said the investigation is ongoing. The suspect is being charged under part 5 of Article 361, Unauthorized interference in the work of information (automated), electronic communication, information and communication systems, electronic communication networks, of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The article provides for publishment of up to 15 years of imprisonment, and additional charges are possible. Netherlands officials thanked the Ukrainian investigators for their assistance and said they “are very pleased with the arrest in Ukraine and are grateful for the space that the Ukrainian police have found for this in times of war.”

The City of Cleveland, Ohio, has been hit by a cyberattack that has closed City Hall and other offices, but the city says essential services remain operational. The city hasn’t revealed the nature of the incident, but the Cleveland cyberattack is one of the highest-profile ones to date affecting a major U.S. municipality. In a recent update on X, the city said it is “still investigating the nature and scope of the incident. The City is collaborating with several key partners who provide expert knowledge and deep experience in this work.”

Cleveland Essential Services Functioning

City Hall and offices at Erieview Plaza are closed to the public and non-essential employees, but the city sought to reassure residents that key services and data remain safe. Emergency services, such as 911, Police, Fire, and EMS are operational, along with other essential services such as water, pollution control, power services, ports and airports. The update said that “certain City data is confirmed to be unaffected, including: - Taxpayer information held by the CCA. - Customer information held by Public Utilities.” That still leaves other data sources that could be affected, however, such as city employees’ personal data. In its initial announcement on X, the city said, “We have shut down affected systems to secure and restore services. Emergency services and utilities are not affected. Updates will be provided as available.” The city hasn’t said whether the incident is ransomware or another cyber attack type, but that will presumably be revealed in later updates. Cleveland itself is home to 362,000 residents, while the surrounding metropolitan area has a population of more than 2 million.

Cleveland Cyberattack Follows Wichita Ransomware; Healthcare Network Hit

Cleveland isn’t the biggest U.S. city to be hobbled by a cyber attack, as at least a few bigger cities have been hit by cyber incidents. The 394,000-resident city of Wichita, Kansas was hit by a ransomware attack last month in an attack linked to the LockBit ransomware group, but Baltimore was perhaps the biggest U.S. city hit by a cyberattack in a crippling 2019 incident that closely followed an Atlanta cyberattack. All of that pales in comparison to the U.S. government, which got hit by more than 32,000 cybersecurity incidents in fiscal 2023, up 10% from fiscal 2022, according to a new White House report on federal cybersecurity readiness. Threat actors seemingly have no end of targets, as a healthcare network in Texas, Arkansas and Florida is also reporting recent cyber troubles that the BlackSuit ransomware group is claiming responsibility for. The Special Health Resources network posted a notice on its website (copied below) that states, “We are currently experiencing a network incident that has caused a temporary disruption to our phones and computer systems. During this time, we are STILL OPEN and ready to serve our patients and community!” [caption id="attachment_76662" align="alignnone" width="750"] Special Health Resources website notice[/caption] If Special Health’s troubles are linked to a cyberattack, they seem to have fared better than the damage sustained by NHS London recently, as cyber attackers seemingly have abandoned long-standing pledges to avoid attacking healthcare systems.

Data breaches affecting customers of the cloud storage provider Snowflake have hit about 165 organizations so far, according to a Google Mandiant report published today. While initial claims linked the Snowflake breach to the cloud provider’s own environment, Mandiant said its investigation backs up Snowflake’s assertion that the breaches came from compromised customer credentials, many of which did not have multi-factor authentication enabled. Some of the high-profile organizations hit in the attack have included Ticketmaster, Advance Auto Parts, Santander, and more.

Snowflake Breach Discovered in April

Mandiant is attributing the breach to UNC5537, “a financially motivated threat actor suspected to have stolen a significant volume of records from Snowflake customer environments. UNC5537 is systematically compromising Snowflake customer instances using stolen customer credentials, advertising victim data for sale on cybercrime forums, and attempting to extort many of the victims.” The threat group is based in North America, with an additional member in Turkey, Mandiant said. “Mandiant's investigation has not found any evidence to suggest that unauthorized access to Snowflake customer accounts stemmed from a breach of Snowflake's enterprise environment,” Mandiant researchers wrote. “Instead, every incident Mandiant responded to associated with this campaign was traced back to compromised customer credentials.” Mandiant first saw evidence of the Snowflake data breach campaign in April, when the company “received threat intelligence on database records that were subsequently determined to have originated from a victim’s Snowflake instance.” In the subsequent investigation, Mandiant found that the organization’s Snowflake instance had been compromised by a threat actor using credentials previously stolen with infostealer malware. “The threat actor used these stolen credentials to access the customer’s Snowflake instance and ultimately exfiltrate valuable data,” Mandiant said. At the time of the compromise, the account did not have multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled.

Hackers Used Credentials from Infostealer Campaigns

Mandiant said its investigations so far into hacked Snowflake customers found that UNC5537 was able to obtain access via stolen customer credentials that were “primarily obtained from multiple infostealer malware campaigns that infected non-Snowflake owned systems.” Some of those infostealer infections date back as far as 2020, using infostealer malware variants such as VIDAR, RISEPRO, REDLINE, RACOON STEALER, LUMMA and METASTEALER. Initial access to Snowflake customer instances often occurred via the native web-based UI (SnowFlake UI AKA SnowSight) or command-line interface (CLI) tool (SnowSQL) running on Windows Server 2022. Mandiant identified additional access leveraging an attacker-named utility, “rapeflake,” which Mandiant is tracking as FROSTBITE. [caption id="attachment_76343" align="alignnone" width="750"] Snowflake breach attack path (source: Mandiant)[/caption] In addition to a lack of MFA, Mandiant said some affected accounts had not updated credentials since they had been stolen, even after significant time had elapsed. The affected Snowflake instances also did not use network allow lists to only allow access from trusted locations. A list of suspect IP addresses can be found on VirusTotal, and Snowflake has also published detailed security information, including indicators of compromise (IoCs).

Hackers claim to have hit BlackBerry Cylance and The New York Times in separate, unrelated incidents, but only the New York Times hack may be significant, as BlackBerry officials say that data purporting to be from their company appears to be several years old and out of date. Data from both incidents have been put up for sale on the dark web. The New York Times confirmed that its code base was hacked on GitHub, while Blackberry may have been the victim of an old third-party data breach dating from before its acquisition of Cylance.

Cylance Breach Claims Disputed By BlackBerry

Claims of the Cylance breach were posted on BreachForums by a poster who goes by Sp1d3r and discussed on X and Reddit, among other places. The poster claims to have data from Cylance customers, partners and employees, and 34 million customer and employee emails. The seller is asking $750,000 and claims to have:

• Customer and prospect email and personally identifiable information
• Products used by organizations
• Sales prospects list with activity status
• Cylance partners list
• Cylance users list

The seller posted a list of the data sets in their possession, which looks like it could be from a CRM database: In a statement to The Cyber Express, BlackBerry Cylance said its investigation is ongoing, but “BlackBerry Cylance systems and products remain secure and are being closely monitored by our security operations team as part of our ongoing commitment to the security of our customers’ data. Based on our investigation to date, we do not believe that BlackBerry data and systems related to our customers, products, and operations have been compromised.” The company’s initial reviews of the data in question suggest that “no current Cylance customers are impacted, and no sensitive information is involved. The data in question was accessed from a third-party platform unrelated to BlackBerry and appears to be from 2015-2018, predating BlackBerry’s acquisition of the Cylance product portfolio.” “We continue to monitor this situation closely and will take all necessary precautions to maintain the integrity of our products and systems and the trust of our customers.”

New York Times Source Code Hacked on GitHub

News of the New York Times data breach was initially reported by vx-underground, which said someone on 4chan had leaked 270GB of source code belong to the newspaper. The poster claimed the Times has more than 5,000 source code repositories, and less than 30 are encrypted. The data included 3.6 million files in all. While the hacked data appears to include IT documentation and source code, the organization reported that its corporate systems and operations are unaffected.

Microsoft is making changes to its planned Windows Recall feature in response to growing criticism over the lack of privacy and cybersecurity controls of the AI screen recording feature. The Recall concerns began with the work of security researcher Kevin Beaumont, first reported by The Cyber Express, and grew to include tools and demonstrations of how easy it would be to hack Recall’s corresponding database of screenshotted user activity. Recall, planned for Copilot+ PCs starting June 18, would have taken frequent screenshots of user activity with inadequate security controls and would have been turned on by default, raising concerns about the ability of hackers, domestic abusers and other malicious actors to access a trove of personal and financial data with ease.

Microsoft Announces Windows Recall Opt-in, Authentication, Encryption

In a blog post today, Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Windows + Devices, said the company has heard those concerns. “Even before making Recall available to customers, we have heard a clear signal that we can make it easier for people to choose to enable Recall on their Copilot+ PC and improve privacy and security safeguards,” Davuluri wrote. “With that in mind we are announcing updates that will go into effect before Recall (preview) ships to customers on June 18.” The first change is to update the set-up experience of Copilot+ PCs “to give people a clearer choice to opt-in to saving snapshots using Recall,” Davuluri wrote. “If you don’t proactively choose to turn it on, it will be off by default.” He provided a screenshot of what that opt-in screen will look like: [caption id="attachment_75793" align="alignnone" width="750"] Windows Recall opt-in screen (source: Microsoft)[/caption] Enrollment in Windows Hello authentication will be required to enable Recall, he said, and “proof of presence is also required to view your timeline and search in Recall.” Davuluri said Microsoft is also “adding additional layers of data protection including ‘just in time’ decryption protected by Windows Hello Enhanced Sign-in Security (ESS) so Recall snapshots will only be decrypted and accessible when the user authenticates. In addition, we encrypted the search index database.” “This gives an additional layer of protection to Recall data in addition to other default enabled Window Security features like SmartScreen and Defender which use advanced AI techniques to help prevent malware from accessing data like Recall,” he added.

Beaumont Skeptical of Planned Recall Changes

In a Mastodon post, Beaumont said he’ll be skeptical of Microsoft’s planned changes until he sees the shipped product and can test it out. “Obviously, I recommend you do not enable Recall, and you tell your family not to enable it too,” Beaumont said. “It’s still labelled Preview, and I’ll believe it is encrypted when I see it. There are obviously serious governance and security failures at Microsoft around how this played out that need to be investigated, and suggests they are not serious about AI safety.”

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today took steps to make internet use safer in the U.S., approving a $200 million program to improve cybersecurity in schools and proposing to require broadband providers to report on their Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) risk mitigation processes. The three-year Schools and Libraries Cybersecurity Pilot Program will study which cybersecurity services and equipment would best help K-12 schools and libraries address growing cyber threats and attacks against their broadband networks. The pilot program will help the Commission “better understand whether and how universal service funds could be used to support the cybersecurity needs of schools and libraries and to share lessons learned with our federal partners to jointly combat this growing problem.” The program will be kept separate from the FCC’s E-Rate program “to ensure gains in enhanced cybersecurity do not undermine E-Rate’s success in connecting schools and libraries and promoting digital equity.” [caption id="attachment_75509" align="alignright" width="200"] FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel[/caption] This pilot program is part of FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel’s Learn Without Limits initiative to improve connectivity in schools and libraries “so everyone, everywhere has access to high-speed internet services.” That initiative supports Wi-Fi on school buses, E-Rate support for libraries in Tribal communities, and funding from the E-Rate program for off-premises use of Wi-Fi hotspots and wireless internet access services.

BGP Security Targeted by FCC

The BGP security initiative stops short of mandating security standards for broadband service providers, and instead would simply require them to report on the effectiveness of those efforts. The measure will be open for public comment before it can be finalized. Broadband providers would be required to “create confidential reports on the steps they have taken, and plan to undertake, to mitigate vulnerabilities in the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), the technical protocol used to route information across the internet. The nation’s largest broadband providers would also be required to file specific public data on a quarterly basis demonstrating their BGP risk mitigation progress.” The decades-old protocol, widely used for communication between networks, “does not include intrinsic security features to ensure trust in the information that is relied upon to exchange traffic among independently managed networks on the internet,” the FCC said in a press release. “BGP national security experts have raised concerns that a bad network actor may deliberately falsify BGP reachability information to redirect traffic. These ‘BGP hijacks’ can expose Americans’ personal information; enable theft, extortion, and state-level espionage; and disrupt services upon which the public or critical infrastructure sectors rely.” The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking adopted today would require that broadband internet access service providers “prepare and update confidential BGP security risk management plans at least annually. These plans would detail their progress and plans for implementing BGP security measures that utilize the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI), a critical component of BGP security.” The nine largest providers would also have to file publicly available quarterly data assessing progress in the implementation of RPKI-based security measures. These large providers won’t have to file subsequent detailed plans with the FCC if they meet a certain security threshold. Smaller broadband providers would not be required to file their plans with the Commission, but would make them available to the FCC upon request.

BGP Hijacked by China Telecom 6 Times

In a statement, Rosenworcel noted that BGP is also known as the “three-napkin protocol.” [caption id="attachment_75508" align="alignleft" width="300"] Vint Cerf, "the father of the internet"[/caption] “Back in 1989, the internet, then a novelty for computer scientists like Vint Cerf, was expanding—fast,” she said. “But the internet’s basic protocols at the time could not handle this growth. So on their lunch break from an Internet Engineering Task Force meeting in Austin, Texas, a pair of engineers sketched out the ideas for BGP on three ketchup-stained paper napkins. What was meant to be a short-term solution developed on the sidelines of an internet engineering conference is still with us today.” Rosenworcel thanked the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency “for working with my office and jointly holding a BGP public forum to discuss this problem.” She also thanked the Department of Defense and Department of Justice “for publicly disclosing in our record that China Telecom used BGP vulnerabilities to misroute United States internet traffic on at least six occasions. “These ‘BGP hijacks’ can expose personal information, enable theft, extortion, and state-level espionage,” she said. “They can also disrupt sensitive transactions that require security, like those in the financial sector.”

AI has been a major focus of the Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit in National Harbor, Maryland this week, and the consensus has been that while large language models (LLMs) have so far overpromised and under-delivered, there are still AI threats and defensive use cases that cybersecurity pros need to be aware of. Jeremy D’Hoinne, Gartner Research VP for AI & Cybersecurity, told conference attendees that hacker uses of AI so far include improved phishing and social engineering – with deepfakes a particular concern. But D’Hoinne and Director Analyst Kevin Schmidt agreed in a joint panel that there haven’t been any novel attack technique arising from AI yet, just improvements on existing attack techniques like business email compromise (BEC) or voice scams. AI security tools likewise remain underdeveloped, with AI assistants perhaps the most promising cybersecurity application so far, able to potentially help with patching, mitigations, alerts and interactive threat intelligence. D’Hoinne cautions that the tools should be used as an adjunct to security staffers so they don’t lose their ability to think critically.

AI Prompt Engineering for Cybersecurity: Precision Matters

Using AI assistants and LLMs for cybersecurity use cases was the focus of a separate presentation by Schmidt, who cautioned that AI prompt engineering needs to be very specific for security uses to overcome the limitations of LLMs, and even then the answer may only get you 70%-80% toward your goal. Outputs need to be validated, and junior staff will require the oversight of senior staff, who will more quickly be able to determine the significance of the output. Schmidt also cautioned that chatbots like ChatGPT should only be used for noncritical data. Schmidt gave examples of good and bad AI security prompts for helping security operations teams. “Create a query in my <name of SIEM> to identify suspicious logins” is too vague, he said. He gave an example of a better way to craft a SIEM query: “Create a detection rule in <name of SIEM> to identify suspicious logins from multiple locations within the last 24 hours. Provide the <SIEM> query language and explain the logic behind it and place the explanations in tabular format.” That prompt should produce something like the following output: [caption id="attachment_75212" align="alignnone" width="300"] SIEM query AI prompt output (source: Gartner)[/caption] Analyzing firewall logs was another example. Schmidt gave the following as an example of an ineffective prompt: “Analyze the firewall logs for any unusual patterns or anomalies.” A better prompt would be: “Analyze the firewall logs from the past 24 hours and identify any unusual patterns or anomalies. Summarize your findings in a report format suitable for a security team briefing.” That produced the following output: [caption id="attachment_75210" align="alignnone" width="300"] Firewall log prompt output (source: Gartner)[/caption] Another example involved XDR tools. Instead of a weak prompt like “Summarize the top two most critical security alerts in a vendor’s XDR,” Schmidt recommended something along these lines: “Summarize the top two most critical security alerts in a vendor’s XDR, including the alert ID, description, severity and affected entities. This will be used for the monthly security review report. Provide the response in tabular form.” That prompt produced the following output: [caption id="attachment_75208" align="alignnone" width="300"] XDR alert prompt output (source: Gartner)[/caption]

Other Examples of AI Security Prompts

Schmidt gave two more examples of good AI prompts, one on incident investigation and another on web application vulnerabilities. For security incident investigations, an effective prompt might be “Provide a detailed explanation of incident DB2024-001. Include the timeline of events, methods used by the attacker and the impact on the organization. This information is needed for an internal investigation report. Produce the output in tabular form.” That prompt should lead to something like the following output: [caption id="attachment_75206" align="alignnone" width="300"] Incident response AI prompt output (source: Gartner)[/caption] For web application vulnerabilities, Schmidt recommended the following approach: “Identify and list the top five vulnerabilities in our web application that could be exploited by attackers. Provide a brief description of each vulnerability and suggest mitigation steps. This will be used to prioritize our security patching efforts. Produce this in tabular format.” That should produce something like this output: [caption id="attachment_75205" align="alignnone" width="300"] Web application vulnerability prompt output (source: Gartner)[/caption]

Tools for AI Security Assistants

Schmidt listed some of the GenAI tools that security teams might use, ranging from chatbots to SecOps AI assistants – such as CrowdStrike Charlotte AI, Microsoft Copilot for Security, SentinelOne Purple AI and Splunk AI – and startups such as AirMDR, Crogl, Dropzone and Radiant Security (see Schmidt’s slide below). [caption id="attachment_75202" align="alignnone" width="300"] GenAI tools for possible cybersecurity use (source: Gartner)[/caption]

Threat actors linked to Chinese state interests have been targeting an unnamed high-profile Southeast Asian government organization since at least March 2022, according to new research from Sophos. The Chinese espionage threat, dubbed “Crimson Palace” by the researchers, was first observed in May 2023 by Sophos MDR’s Mark Parsons, who uncovered “a complex, long-running Chinese state-sponsored cyberespionage operation” during a threat hunt across Sophos Managed Detection and Response telemetry. The threat actors appear to remain active.

VMware DLL Sideloading Discovery Launched Investigation

MDR launched the hunt after the discovery of a DLL sideloading technique that exploited VMNat.exe, a VMware component, the Sophos researchers wrote in a report published today. The investigation uncovered “at least three clusters of intrusion activity” between March 2023 and December 2023. The threat hunt uncovered previously unreported malware associated with the threat clusters, as well as a new improved variant of the EAGERBEE malware. Sophos is tracking the clusters as Cluster Alpha (STAC1248), Cluster Bravo (STAC1807), and Cluster Charlie (STAC1305). “While our visibility into the targeted network was limited due to the extent to which Sophos endpoint protection had been deployed within the organization, our investigations also found evidence of related earlier intrusion activity dating back to early 2022,” the researchers wrote. “This led us to suspect the threat actors had long-standing access to unmanaged assets within the network.”

Chinese Espionage Threat Uses Familiar Tools and Infrastructure

The Crimson Palace clusters were found to use tools and infrastructure connected to Chinese threat actors BackdoorDiplomacy, REF5961, Worok, TA428, Unfading Sea Haze and the APT41 subgroup Earth Longzhi. Sophos “has observed the actors attempting to collect documents with file names that indicate they are of intelligence value, including military documents related to strategies in the South China Sea,” the report said. “Though we are currently unable to perform high-confidence attribution or confirm the nature of the relationship between these clusters, our current investigation suggests that the clusters reflect the work of separate actors tasked by a central authority with parallel objectives in pursuit of Chinese state interests,” the researchers wrote. Cluster Bravo appears to have been short lived, observed operating only in March 2023. Cluster Alpha’s last active known implant ceased C2 communications in August 2023, “and we have not seen the cluster of activity re-emerge in the victim network. However, the same cannot be said for Cluster Charlie.” Cluster Charlie has been active at least through April 2024. “After a few weeks of dormancy, we observed the actors in Cluster Charlie re-penetrate the network via a web shell and resume their activity at a higher tempo and in a more evasive manner,” the researchers said. Activities included exfiltration efforts, and “instead of leaving their implants on disks for long periods of time, the actors used different instances of their web shell to re-penetrate the network for their sessions and began to modulate different C2 channels and methods of deploying implants on target systems.” While the clusters had their own patterns of behavior, “the timing of operations and overlaps in compromised infrastructure and objectives suggest at least some level of awareness and/or coordination between the clusters in the environment,” they wrote. The researchers detailed differences and overlaps between the clusters in a Venn diagram republished below. [caption id="attachment_75161" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Tactics and overlap of the Crimson Palace threat clusters (source: Sophos)[/caption]

Chinese Espionage Threat Uses Novel Malware, DLL, Evasion

Tactics of the Chinese espionage threat actors include accessing critical IT systems, performing reconnaissance of specific users, collecting sensitive military and technical information, and deploying various malware implants for command-and control (C2) communications. Sophos researchers noted three key findings on the threat actors’ tools and tactics. Novel malware variants: Researchers identified the use of previously unreported malware they call CCoreDoor that was concurrently discovered by BitDefender, and PocoProxy, and an updated variant of EAGERBEE malware with the ability to “blackhole communications to antivirus (AV) vendor domains in the targeted organization’s network.” Other malware variants they noted include NUPAKAGE, Merlin C2 Agent, Cobalt Strike, PhantomNet backdoor, RUDEBIRD malware, and the PowHeartBeat backdoor. Extensive dynamic link library (DLL): Researchers observed more than 15 distinct DLL sideloading scenarios, most of which abused Windows Services, legitimate Microsoft binaries, and AV vendor software. Prioritization of evasive tactics and tools: The researchers noted “many novel evasion techniques, such as overwriting dll in memory to unhook the Sophos AV agent process from the kernel, abusing AV software for sideloading, and using various techniques to test the most efficient and evasive methods of executing their payloads.” Sophos cited 10 researchers for their work investigating the threat: Colin Cowie, Jordon Olness, Hunter Neal, Andrew Jaeger, Pavle Culum, Kostas Tsialemis, and Daniel Souter of Sophos Managed Detection and Response, and Gabor Szappanos, Andrew Ludgate, and Steeve Gaudreault of SophosLabs.